Great question to ask about taking readings when you’ve got a dual rate or Economy 7 meter.

On a traditional meter sometimes the readings will be labelled - high and low or day and night-  which is easier to determine which reading is which. In your case the registers are labelled rate 1 and rate 2, usually rate 1 refers to your day register but not always so it’s good to check before submitting your meter readings. You might be able to work out which reading is which by checking the current reading against your reading history on the ‘Meter Readings’ page of your online account or OVO app (download for Android or iOS).

If you can’t work it out using these methods the best way to tell is to carry out a Load Test​. This involves taking two sets of readings during your peak hours - only one reading should change which will be your daytime register. 

Want to avoid having to take the readings manually in future? We’re now able to install smart meters in all Economy 7 set-ups which send us the readings automatically. No more confusing meter readings!

please can someone help?

i have had storage heaters fitted and they are great but for some reason our usage was big yesterday for a small one bedroom apartment. over 34kilowatts.

they programmed 00.00-07.00am but when i look at my meter readings from when we moved in and chatting online with an advisor he has asked me to check the readings.

my question is ; is R1 day or night?

i have asked two advisors and they tell me different

thanks

Hiya @shan1970 !

Sorry we missed you earlier. I can try to answer this with an initial answer for now, but to help improve my answer, I’d need to ask what meter you’ve got. If you’re OK with snapping some photos of your meters and post them in your next reply, this may help me to figure this out.

As far as I’m aware though, for a Secure meter in Economy 7 mode, R1 is usually the Day rate and R2 is usually the Night rate. If you compare what’s shown on the app to what’s on the meter display, this should help you to match up which is which. Likewise, ToU 1 would be Day and ToU 2 would be Night for an Aclara meter in Economy 7 mode.

I hope this helps.

Hi @shan1970,

Thanks for raising a really great question about how to work out which register is which in terms of an Economy 7 meter.

Our community volunteer, @Blastoise186 gives some great advice here to check your readings against those shown in the app.

Unfortunately there’s no general rule in terms of which register is the day and which the night (how much simpler that would make things!) so if you are looking to confirm which register is which we’d recommend carry out a Load Test. Check out the best answer above for more details.

Let us know how you get on with this and if you need any more help understanding how to read your meter, we’re always happy to help! 

thanks for your help everyone. 

i will take photos of meter readings to see if i can work out which is which.

if you look at this snap shot, you can see how they appear to be the wrong way around from 23rd April to 30th April when we moved across to Ovo

Ah yes I see what you mean. This can be fixed though!

If you let the Support Team know, they should be able to flip that around to what it should have been. It seems your screenshots show everything else as normal, so it’s just a case of correcting that period. This may take the team a while but they’ll be happy to try to fix that and then re-run the number crunching from there.